Divided Friends

4. John R. Slattery, 1851–1902: From Attorney to Presbyter

4 JOHN R. SLATTERY, 1851–1902 From Attorney to Presbyter On Saturday, June 21, 1902, in Baltimore’s Cathedral of the Assumption , Cardinal James Gibbons ordained twenty-nine-year-old John Henry Dorsey. Dorsey (1873–1926) was the second African American ordained to the priesthood in the United States. Both black priests belonged to St. Joseph’s Society for Colored Missions, commonly known as the Josephites. Both had attended the Church of St. Francis Xavier at the corner of Calvert and Pleasant Streets in the heart of Baltimore. On Sunday, June 22, Dorsey returned to his former parish, “the womb of Black Catholicism in the United States,” to celebrate his first Mass.1 John R. Slattery turned a joyful day for the parish and for the Dorsey family into a day notorious for the sermon he preached at Father Harry Dorsey’s first Mass. Superior of the Josephites and rector of St. Joseph’s Seminary where Dorsey had been an outstanding student, Slattery celebrated his twenty-fifth anniversary as a priest earlier that year. Since the late 1880s, he had championed the cause of African American priests. From 1877 to 1884, he served as pastor at St. Francis Xavier . On what should have been a triumphant day for him, Slattery climbed the pulpit determined to embarrass Cardinal Gibbons and signal the end of his active days as a Josephite.2 He blamed racism in the church for lack of Catholic support for Josephite work. Years of 61 1. This designation is from the remarks of Peter E. Hogan, SSJ on the 115th anniversary of the founding of the Church of St. Francis Xavier, November 26, 1978, copy; JFA. 2. “I decided to use this occasion to make a scene that would force the cardinal to accept my resignation as superior.” Biographie, XVI, 14. On the “Dorsey Sermon,” see XVI, 14–17 and XVII, 1. Citations to the Biographie are by chapter (Roman) and page (Arabic) number. All translations are my own. frustration combined with intellectual difficulties in a volatile mix. Slattery exploded with a sermon that his chief critic denounced as “the most incendiary pronouncement which I can recall as coming from a Catholic priest.” Why, Slattery asked, was Father Dorsey only the second African American priest ordained in the United States? Since Emancipation, the numbers of African American Protestant clergy had continued to rise. Catholicism , recognizing the importance of “native clergy,” had never drawn an “ethnological line in the priesthood.” He recalled the glories of Christian North Africa in the days of Origen and Tertullian, Cyprian and Augustine. If these latter were not “strictly speaking Ethiopians,” they were surely not “English or Irish or Germans or Americans.” If they were to return now, these patristic Africans would have no trouble recognizing the congregation of St. Francis Xavier. White congregations, by contrast, might remind them of the “Scythians and barbarians of Scripture,” the slaves of their own time. Perhaps the church in the U.S. had so few African American priests because Catholics had failed to give “the Negro” the “fair show and no favor ” that he has a right to claim.3 Answering the claim that priests such as the Josephites were wasting their time, he questioned the relative success of priests who ministered among the immigrants. He described “the leakage among White Catholics” as “enormous .” Since the founding of the United States, “millions and millions have dropped away.” Catholic mission efforts in general suffer from lack of “native clergy.” Instead of the simple Christianity preached in earlier times, missionaries still offer “a Catholicism, from which the highest advanced nations have turned.” Only with coercive “Spanish methods” have modern missionaries succeeded. In principle the church “recognizes no race.” But “the spirit of the political party inimical to the Negro” dominates most Catholics in the United States. Many “are prejudiced against the Negro.” “It is this uncatholic sentiment which looks askance on Negro priests.” But “every race naturally loves to see its own sons at the altar.” If Protestants can have Negro preachers and Negro professors, if public schools can have Negro teachers, “why then should not the Catholic Church have Negro priests?”4 62  Slattery and O’Connell 3. Slattery had the text of the sermon printed in a 4"x 5½" brochure. A copy is preserved in JFA along with William E. Starr’s open letter to Slattery replying to the sermon and Slattery’s response entitled “Aftermath of the Dorsey Sermon.” Both Starr’s letter and Slattery...